Sunday's Squirt Of Hot Air Will Be Nasty

The middle of the nation is still broiling under a relentless heat wave, and a squirt of that very hot air looks like it will make it to Vermont on Sunday.    

The color shading on this map has most of New England outside of
Maine in the 95-100 degree range Sunday afternoon. Click on
the image to make it bigger and easier to see.  If you look
closely, this particular map has a foreast high of 99 degrees
in Burlington, Vermont. We shall see. 

The good news is the hot air will be flushed out by a cold front by Monday, though it won't exactly be "cold" behind said weather front. 

Temperatures here will remain above normal, but  not torrid, like the kind of weather expected in parts of the Plains and South, and below the Mason-Dixon Line along the East Coast.  

A warm front passed through yesterday, with disappointingly light showers in the morning.  We had a gorgeous evening, though, but the warm to hot air is now being established.  Today will be definitely on the warm side, with highs well into the 80s, with a few spot 90 degree readings in the warmer valleys.

Tonight, especially in the Champlain Valley where a south wind will prevent radiational cooling, it will be on the stuffy side.  I imagine the "low" temperature in Burlington tomorrow morning will be around 75 degrees or so.

All the ingredients are coming together for a very hot Sunday. Temperatures through a thick layer of the atmosphere will be at near record high values. 

For the Champlain Valley, the wind will be coming out of the southwest.  It'll come down the slope of the Adirondacks in that scenario.  Air flowing down the slopes of a mountain gets compressed, which heats it.  

As usual, the air column over us does get cooler with height.  But at around 8,000 feet overhead, says the National Weather Service there will be another layer of warm air which would prevent any cooling thunderstorms to develop on Sunday. 

If you want to cool off, here's a photo of cars stuck on the hill near
my St. Albans, Vermont house during a March, 2017 blizzard

Taken together, all this means an we should endure an expected high in the mid to upper 90s in the Champlain Valley on Sunday and highs of 88 to 95 in pretty much the rest of Vermont. 

One or two models or forecasts I've seen predict a high of 100 degrees in Burlington Sunday. I suppose that's possible, but I see it as pretty unlikely. 

To nobody's surprise, a big chunk of Vermont and surrounding areas is under a heat advisory on Sunday, so take it easy!  Do your outdoor work very early in the morning, and retreat to air conditioning if possible by afternoon.  Have your nice drinks of water or other refreshing non-alcoholic beverage handy, too.

I'm saying non-alcoholic, not because I'm on some sort of temperance movement. It's just that alcohol can exascerbate the effects of heat. 

The only saving grace regarding the heat tomorrow is that the air will mix in the lowest several thousand feet of the atmosphere. That will tend to lower the humidity just a bit for a time in the afternoon. And most of us will have a steady breeze, instead of having to endure still, hot air 

The record high in Burlington Sunday is 98 degrees set in 2013.  That's a pretty high record, so it will be tough to beat. Montpelier's record high for the date on Sunday is 92 degrees, so that one is in jeopardy. St. Johnsbury's record high is 95 degrees, so we'll see about that. 

That cold front is coming through later Sunday night or early Monday.  The timing is such that we probably won't see any severe thunderstorms with it.  Any rain that does fall Sunday night or early Monday will unfortunately be only scattered a brief.

A few spots might get a decent dousing from some embedded downpours, but this won't be any kind of widespread rain. 

Behind the cold front, it will be dry and only a little warmer than average for the first half of the week. Other weather disturbances give us a risk of some showers later in the week but temperatures will still remain mostly in the low 80s for highs.  So that's not terrible.